Medium Community - Residential Education & Outreach Toolkit

THIS TOOLKIT IS PROVIDED BY RECYCLE, MICHIGAN—AN EDUCATION AND OUTREACH INITIATIVE OF THE MICHIGAN RECYCLING COALITION

RESIDENTIAL EDUCATION & OUTREACH TOOLKIT

MEDIUM COMMUNITIES • POPULATION 10K-50K

QUICK LINKS

Guidance for Medium Communities

Communities of this size may have a small staff or limited resources for recycling education, but they also often have a strong community identity that can be leveraged to rally the population around recycling initiatives and educational campaigns.

The resources in this toolkit are designed to help increase your reach, leverage best practices within your community, and give you extra ideas for ways to engage community members and bring out the pride in your community's recycling program.

Navigating the Toolkit: Use the accordion menu below for resources curated for medium-sized communities. You can always click on the "Resources" menu at the top of the page for a full list of resources, which you can filter by topic. Not seeing what you're looking for? Fill out the resource request form on the "Support" page!

GETTING STARTED

A great place to start is by taking an inventory of educational materials you already have and figuring out if they are still relevant or if they need an upgrade. The Recycling Communications Best Practices and Standard Language resources can give you something measure by and a resource to help you update any materials that may be out of date. Using simple, consistent language will help your message stick.

EDUCATOR CHECKLIST

EDUCATOR PLANNING

Good recycling for communities is all about behavior. What does it take to move people and provide them with the knowledge and motivation to improve? This Behavior Change Strategy Guide can help you craft a strategy to target the behaviors that could have the biggest impact, whether trying to increase participation, decrease contamination, or some other goal.

Think about using a Recycling Survey to residents to gauge their knowledge and interest in recycling in your community. This can help you figure out which areas are most important for targeting your education.

Leveling up your education and outreach can have an impact on one of the most persistent challenges faced by communities of all size - contamination. Best Practices in Recycling Contamination might be a helpful resource if tackling contamination is one of your goals.

And finally, if there's a specific need that your community has and, you can seek out opportunities for funding, or think about speaking with elected leaders and decision-makers about how to bring needed resources to your community.

COMMUNICATING WITH THE PUBLIC

If you're short on time or just want to keep it simple, these are resources you can directly copy and paste, print, or publish to get the message across to your community.

These Messaging Samples can help keep communication consistent throughout your program.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot - this resource can help you communicate along the hierarchy.

And if you're looking for materials to have printed to distribute to community members, take a look at the Marketing Materials and Social Media.